applied to the freeway in 1976. The designation was formally repealed in 2001. Two other segments near the Straits of Mackinac were named in 1976 for figures instrumental in the construction of the Mackinac Bridge. From the Cheboygan–Otsego county line north to the bridge, I-75 was named for G. Mennen Williams, the former governor once called "Michigan's Politician of the Century" in the press. The section in Mackinac County from the northern end of the Mackinac Bridge was named for Prentiss M. Brown, the former Congressman and Senator who served on the MBA board until his death in 1971. Monumental bridges Along its route in the state, I-75 utilizes three of Michigan's monumental bridges. The first of them is the Zilwaukee Bridge near Saginaw. The original bridge across the Saginaw River at Zilwaukee was built in 1960 as a bascule bridge to allow shipping traffic to use the river. Opening the drawbridge would back traffic up on I-75/US 10/US 23 for upwards of four hours on holiday weekends. Approved in 1974, construction on the replacement bridge started in October 1979. A major construction accident in August 1982 delayed completion of the new Zilwaukee Bridge; a bridge pier partially collapsed when contractors overloaded a section under construction. The affected deck segment tilted to rest higher on one end and lower on the other. The structure was originally supposed to cost $76.8 million with a 1983 completion date; in the end it cost $131.3 million (equivalent to $ in ) when the southbound span finally opened on September 19, 1988. The structure is the largest concrete segmental bridge in the United States. The second is the Mackinac Bridge that connects Michigan's two peninsulas at the Straits of Mackinac. A structure was first proposed in 1888 by one of the directors of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Car ferry service was started in 1923 to cross the straits, and a bridge authority was first created in 1934 to investigate the possibility of building a permanent connection across the straits. This early authority started with a 1921 proposal for a series of bridges that would have connected Cheboygan to St. Ignace by way of Bois Blanc, Round, and Mackinac islands. The federal Public Works Administration rejected loan and grant requests for that project. A second, direct crossing was then proposed based on designs used for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The collapse of that